Don’t Fear Taking Time Off

[00:00:01] Hey guys Coach Edwards here withLacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com If you had haven’t already, head over to AthleteSpecific.com and check out what I’m doing over there. A lot of you guys don’t know that I coach athletes in a variety of sports.

[00:00:16] Lacrosse has been my bread and butter for so many years, but over the last half a decade or so I’ve been working with athletes in a variety of sports like soccer, tennis, ice hockey, skiing, you name it.

[00:00:31] But I always love my goalies and so that’s why I’m here. But check over at www.AthleteSpecific.com, and if you’ve got a friend or a parent with a good athlete who’s got big athletic dreams you want to send them over there, and have them download my freebie which is Mastering Automatic Negative Thoughts in athletes or you’ll love that.

[00:00:48] Okay so today I want to answer a question that I get every year. I’m going to paraphrase this because it’s kind of long.

This Weeks Lacrosse Goalie Question

[00:00:53] But basically I get these this time of year. It’s like, “Dear Coach, lacrosse is right around the corner. I haven’t picked up a stick since last fall. What should I do to get in shape and get ready to be the best goalie I can be. Thanks so much.”.

[00:01:07] That is from Chris in Silver Spring, Maryland. All right great question Chris. But I’m sure this applies to a lot of lacrosse goalies.

Step #1: Don’t Worry

[00:01:15] First and foremost if you’ve taken a break from lacrosse don’t worry about it. All right. It is proven that when we give the mind and the body a rest it gives it a chance to kind of like I think of the term that use on a computer that idea of defragmenting a disk. If you’ve never heard that just Google it.

Defragment Your Hard Drive

[00:01:40] It’s basically like you’ve used this hard drive over and over and over again, and you’ve saved files and you’ve deleted files that you’ve used files you’ve opened files and closed files. Now what happens is that disk. It’s not like you’re just laying stuff on top or another or putting away boxes nice and tidy, you get boxes over here and you get gaps and things like that.

[00:01:57] So basically the disk is not really clean. And so, when you defragment it you basically free up all this space. So the hard drive can can work properly. And then you also just give it more time and more space to think and store new stuff. Right. New information.

You Are Pruning Bad Synaptic Connections

[00:02:14] And as an athlete, isn’t that what we’re trying to do. We’re always learning and we’re trying to basically prune old synaptic connections in our brain (bad habits) and create new ones.

[00:02:26] So the break that you’ve had is actually really good for your mind and your body, right.

[00:02:32] If you haven’t played anything and you’ve just been sitting on the couch? Granted, you’re going to have a little bit of upkeep. You should probably get moving. (You know this is a bigger conversation this video that will take that into consideration with my Lacrosse Goalie University members and my Athlete Breakthrough Blueprint members. We talk about this a lot.).

[00:02:51] But you’re going to want to get out, get running,